Why you should aim to do new habits 'dailyish'

The second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism. The psychology professor Robert Boice spent his career studying the writing habits of his fellow academics, reaching the conclusion that the most productive and successful among them generally made writing a smaller part of their daily routine than the others, so that it was much more feasi

it’s the Seinfeld Strategy that’s self-indulgent, because at the moment you set it in motion, you flatter yourself that you’re going to be able to follow it impeccably, day after day

One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most. What’s needed instead in such situations, I gradually came to understand, is a kind of anti-skill: not the counterproductive strategy of trying to make yourself more efficient, but rather a willingness to resist such urges – to learn to stay with

A much better rule – indeed, one I think more accurately reflects Seinfeld’s approach to his work – is to do things dailyish.

Part of the problem here is an unhelpful assumption that you begin each morning in a sort of ‘productivity debt’, which you must struggle to pay off through hard work, in the hope that you might reach a zero balance by the evening. As a counterstrategy, keep a ‘done list’, which starts empty first thing in the morning, and which you then gradually